Week 10: Hot Air Balloons and April Fools Day Disasters

This past week was filled with so much more spring weather! On Tuesday, my friends and I had a picnic on the lawns outside of the university. I think we would have been completely satisfied to lay on the grass all day, but, unfortunately, we had classes to go to and French to learn.

On Wednesday, after classes, Lucas and I went on an adventure to find sneakers for him to wear during spring break. His shoes had been giving him problems so I suggested we go to Decathon, an athletic store across the river. We took the bus, drove through the suburbs, and arrived to the store. We spent an hour inside looking at the shoes and all the other fun stuff before we decided that we found what we needed. Then, we headed back into the city. On the way back, the bus went around a huge curve and I almost fell out of my seat. I let out a squeal, and held onto the arm rest for dear life. Of course, the French man sitting across the aisle saw the whole thing take place and could not stop laughing as I was making Lucas help me back up. It was such an experience! I guess in this situation it was pretty clear who the locals were, and who was still getting used to the transportation system!

Friday, the Fambam and I got together to make our final preparations for our spring break adventure. We went to a little bakery in the city center and ate lunch while talking about the highlights of our weeks. Overall, we all had really solid and happy weeks, especially after the sun came out from the clouds and everyone’s moods and happy levels were at their high and normal levels. I tried my very first pastry in France and it was so delicious. It had strawberry’s on it. As I hadn’t eaten strawberries in so long, the fresh fruit tasted like spring. We ended up sitting there for 3 hours, getting everything done and just enjoying each others company. Then, we went to a park and soaked in the rest of our afternoon.

Friday evening, one of the girls in my foyer invited me to play board games with a group of them after dinner. So, I decided to join in. The only thing was that they were not playing board games, it was charades and word games. Was it difficult! But, considering that I am still learning French, I would say that I did pretty well. Then, we sang Karaoke. It was all Disney songs in French which was actually quite funny. Then, somehow, the Karaoke songs turned into a dance party. One of the girls loves Spanish music so we ended up dancing to that. It was such a fun night and I finally got to have a dance party that I had been telling my fambam that we had to have!

Saturday, for the first time ever, I was welcomed into a French home. I had met a French woman who teaches English classes at a local high school at church. After asking questions about the education system in France, she had invited me to her home for lunch. She ended up living just 20 minutes away from me by foot. When I got there, we had an aperitif of Prosciutto with orange juice. Then, for lunch, she served us pork stuffed tomatoes or as she called them “tomates farcies” with rice. She also offered me a dessert of a type of yogurt with raspberry sauce. It was so much food and everything was so delicious! I couldn’t believe her hospitality and her kindness. She talked to me about her curriculum and her students. It was so interesting to hear all about it!

Afterwards, Audrey, Amanda, and I went to the big supermarket in town to buy snacks and breakfast foods for our trip. When we were walking there, we were having such a great conversation, that I wasn’t paying any attention to the roads and I got us completely lost. I looked around and I had no idea where we were. It turned out that we were just a block away from the store but I ended up walking us around for probably 40 minutes. (My bad, guys, but at least we got to enjoy the nice weather!)

Then, while walking back, ‘disaster’ struck! Amanda had bought a vinaigrette that was in a glass bottle. Her bag had accidentally hit one of the sets of stairs up to someone’s home just right causing the bottom of the bottle to shatter. We didn’t even realize it until I asked her what was dripping from the bottom of her bag. It turned out that the entire bag with all of her purchases was filled with the vinegar that had come out of the bottle. Immediately, we tried to quickly salvage everything that we could from the bag, Audrey and I putting her food into our bags. I quickly ran back to my foyer, which was just 5 minutes away and grabbed an extra reusable bag. When I got back to them, the whole sidewalk was covered in vinegar that had all seeped from the bag. It was such a mess! But, we got quite a laugh after we finally cleaned everything up.

In the evening, the three of us went to Emily and Sara’s house and we had a Mexican Fiesta. Emily, Sara, Emi, Shelby, Audrey, Amanda, and I were all there and we had so many laughs.  It had been so long since we all had eaten Mexican food and it was so, so delicious. Plus, their host family’s cat, Kingbeef, was the cutest! We all then went downtown and enjoyed the nightlife. Jessie came afterwards and the boys joined us after they got back from their trip to Tours.

On Sunday, after going to church, Audrey, Amanda, Lucas, and I ended up going to Terra Botanica, the botanical garden just outside of Angers. We took the tram and ended up right nearby. It was one of their first weekends open and they were having a “Portes Ouvert” or open door welcome with reduced entry fees. It was kind of like a craft fair/ farmers market inside where local vendors sold plants and plant products throughout the garden. And, they had a special “Honor the Rose” ceremony where we were all given roses to place around the garden. All the flowers around the botanical garden were in bloom. The weather was just hot enough where we decided to get ice cream cones, sitting down right next to the carousel. It was so delicious because I hadn’t had ice cream since my birthday!

Then, this is the most exciting part, we went up into the garden’s hot air balloon! We waited in line for at least an hour and a half and it was so worth it! When we finally mounted the balloon, we got to see views of the surrounding countryside and the city center in the distance. All the people below us became ant size and we could see all the intricacies of the gardens below us. We only were in it for probably 10 minutes, but it was so lovely! Everything around us was so green and lush. I felt like I had to soak in the view as much as possible and my photos definitely did not give the view proper justice. Unfortunately, we had to come back down. But, that was expected.

On the way back, we ended up missing two trams, and ended up having to wait an hour for the next one to arrive. We were quite worried we were going to be stranded and have to walk the distance back as we were all so hungry and tired after a lot of adventure. But, alas, a tram finally did come and we were able to fully appreciate all that we had seen. The garden was definitely worth it!

I hope your week was filled with as many flowers and fresh spring breezes as mine was. I will be out of reach for the next few weeks so stay awesome. As always, thanks for stopping by my corner of sweetness!

~Emily

Click here if you want to read Lucas’s account of Terra Botanica.